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- Why selling on Costco is a great addition to your online marketplace portfolio<\/li>\n
- How loyal Costco customers are<\/li>\n
- The effect Costco content can have on your syndication strategy<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The David to Amazon\u2019s Goliath<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Costco.com is accessible to more people than its brick-and-mortar counterpart. Unlike Costco\u2019s physical stores, you don\u2019t have to be a member to buy. Instead, they assess a 5% service fee on all orders by nonmembers, which still results in good deals.
\n![\"Costco](\"http:\/\/content26.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/1-trucks-600.png\")
\nThey\u2019re also easier to work with in many ways than Amazon is. They don\u2019t charge for product description upload, unlike Amazon, which usually assesses fees in the hundreds of dollars for even simpler, lower-priced items. Costco also pays its suppliers faster\u2013in 30.1 days, on average, compared to 95.8 days for Amazon and 38.5 days for Walmart, per the Harvard Business Review<\/a>.<\/p>\nCostco members are loyal. There are, per Costco.com\u2019s company profile<\/a>, currently 71.2 million members in 39 million households. (To say nothing of their 6.6 million business membership accounts.) Many of them are fiercely loyal\u00a0and vocal about it, too. Do a quick Google search for \u201cI love Costco\u201d to get a quick anecdotal look at some members\u2019 devotion. The top result of a similar search for Amazon is this article<\/a>. A necessary evil indeed.<\/p>\n
Costco in the Constellation of Online Marketplaces<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Costco is often compared to Sam\u2019s Club, the members-only branch of Walmart. There are certainly similarities: they both operate out of warehouses. They both require membership to shop. And they\u2019re both best known for being great places to purchase comically large quantities of toilet paper.
\n![\"One](\"http:\/\/content26.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/4-B-loya_customer_full-600-98x300.png\")
\nHowever, while Sam\u2019s Club has more locations than Costco, Costco\u2019s sales volume is higher. It ranked 19th\u00a0on the Fortune 500 for 2014<\/a> and passed $100 billion in sales for the first time last year. They began selling in Mexico<\/a> in 2013 and partnered with Alibaba\u2019s Tmall to start online operations in China<\/a> in 2014. This adds to Costco.com’s existing online portfolio, which already serviced the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.<\/p>\nSyndicate for Success<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Costco sells in a variety of categories (17 primary ones, as of this writing). The most popular categories among our clientele have been home and kitchen and consumer packaged goods (better known as CPG). The requirements for enhanced content vary between categories, but we\u2019ll get to that in our next post. First, let\u2019s talk about the joys of syndication.<\/p>\n
Content26 partners with Webcollage<\/a> because they provide our clients access to hundreds of online points of sale with very little work. We\u2019ve talked about syndication<\/a> before, and it\u2019s still a service we recommend strongly to most of our clients because it\u2019s in most clients\u2019 interest to sell more things to more people. (Writers can do math too, it turns out.)<\/p>\n
The only downside, in this respect, to syndicating to Costco is that all of your product content must be created with their restrictions in mind, and their rules for content can be more complicated and difficult to deal with than even Amazon. This means your product content on every site you syndicate to must meet Costco\u2019s perception of what makes a great product page, even if you would prefer to format or write your content differently for Bed, Bath &\u00a0Beyond or Walmart.com.<\/p>\n
(A note: syndicated content<\/a> is not hard-coded on websites, instead being pulled via JavaScript each time the page is loaded. This frees you from concerns about SEO penalties due to duplicate content<\/a>. Pretty great, right?)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s possible, though far more difficult, to upload hard-coded content to Costco.com. However, Webcollage is simple enough and carries enough easy advantages that we don\u2019t recommend pursuing it. You can also syndicate product content to Costco.com via Flix and Cnet.<\/p>\n
Coming soon: Part two, in which we look at Costco\u2019s content requirements, explain their sometimes-difficult review cycle, and give you\u00a0tips\u00a0to create your own strategy for selling on Costco.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Costco.com is a recent entry to the online marketplace arena, particularly compared to relative veterans such as their Seattle neighbor,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":24524,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[125,789,1462,1460],"tags":[1378,1411,1408],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n